Ireland vs Russia

[benin]

I'm just back from the Aviva, after watching the worst Ireland performance in a long time.
It could have been a lot worse, a miracle that it ended 3 - 2.

watching it on the telly it looked to me we were maybe 4-0 loosers worst thing is russia have no defence...christ i know he is fucked up but midfield needs stephen ireland ....the fucked up ..wait i still feel sorry for him and the deamons he is facing

[An don]

As keano says i would camp outside Irelands house till he agrees to play . And before the wishywashys reply with no player is bigger than the team, thats find and dandy if we had an embarassament of riches in midfield .

[shanamaniac]

we dont need steven ireland he is a sulky little bastard who has had one good season with man city and now plays like a donkey for villa. if we had keith andrews and steven reid in the centre of midfield we would be fine, but we need to stop just pumping balls at the box and get it down and pass the ball.

[An don]

we dont need steven ireland he is a sulky little bastard who has had one good season with man city

ireland v greene . i know who id pick time after time

[nicegirlsarenice]

We put the fear of god into them near the end.... I think that's worth something at least guys. It's a lot better to go home 3-2 than 3-0. This was one of the best teams in the world we were playing... they dominated Slovakia as well and it was only through a remarkable fluke goal out of nothing that gave Slovakia the win. Slovakia lost 3-1 to Armenia... I really believe that we can win them next week and come second in the group.

Maybe we really do need to go back to long-ball and go at it the whole hog as it's the only thing that's going to work with our players. Robbie Keane and Kevin Doyle are quite good at getting on the end of things. I don't know what the aversion to playing the long ball is, it mightn't look as pretty but it an work.

[An don]

This was one of the best teams in the world we were playing... .

I beg to differ , they are ranked 25 in the world only eight places above us .

[nicegirlsarenice]

I beg to differ , they are ranked 25 in the world only eight places above us .

The FIFA rankings are well-known to be horse shit. You get points for playing Friendlies, you can't lose points even if you lose to San Marino, it's a joke. Here is a better rating system:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Football_Elo_Ratings

Ireland are actually just 9 places behind Russia here so it doesn't work that much for my argument, but let's at least start with a valid rating system.

First of all 9 places is a fair way in international football. For example Spain would very much be expected to beat Mexico who are 9 places below them (10th), Mexico would be expected to beat Australia (19th). I think as well Ireland's rating might have been a bit inflated because of good results against France and Italy in the last campaign, both of which were probably way over-rated at the time.

Overall Russia are a really good team and were always favourites to win this match, they got to the semi-finals of euro 2008 and some people think they can win the world cup or european championships in the coming years.

It shows a good attitude that they kept trying at 3-0 down and made a good comeback that just wasn't enough, that's all I'm saying.

[Rayden]

I caught the last 5 minutes of this match. It seemed to me to be a vintage performance from Ireland. Hoofing the ball up the field in a lame attempt to scrape a draw.

[Forrest]

I caught the last 5 minutes of this match. It seemed to me to be a vintage performance from Ireland. Hoofing the ball up the field in a lame attempt to scrape a draw.

I had the misfortune to see the whole game. Russia totally outplayed Ireland and could have been 5 or 6 up when Keane fell over for a very soft penalty. The 2nd goal by Shane Long gave Ireland great hope, but the Russians were still the more likely team to score. What do we expect when we play with on 2 decent defenders, and an almost invisible central midfield.

[Rayden]

Lol, I saw that too Forrest. Jeebus! Football has seemed to have gotten even wimpier. Didnt think it was possible. From what I could make out, it would appear that he was fouled by a blade of grass.